WoW: Season of Discovery devs on PvP encounters, GDKP runs and the future of the game - Dexerto
“It’s probably a little bit too soon to say, but I think my knee-jerk initial reaction of playing the game on multiple servers a lot is yeah, I’ve noticed a lot less advertisements and things like that. It’s given us the opportunity to crack down on things a little bit more easily. Not just gold selling and botting but gold buying.”
“GDKP is an excellent way to launder money and an excellent way to obfuscate the movement of illicit gold. Without that sort of shield, it’s making it a lot easier for us to clean up other things and be a little bit more steadfast about other aspects of the economy.”
There it is, straight from Mr. Greenfield himself. GDKPs are used to launder dirty gold, just like I and many others have been saying on the forums for years. Without the plausible deniability of GDKP to hide behind, Blizzard is having an easier time of tracking down RMT. This explains the sudden increase in “I was banned for no reason” posts.
I’ve very encouraged by these public statements. Hopefully this means GDKP will be banned in all other forms of WoW soon as well.
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Yeah wow, I’m sure none of the folks banned had gotten caught in the crossfire.
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With hearing stuff such as
“When selling in trade chat, if you accept gold from someone who RMT’d you’re guilty of laundering dirty money and deserve to be banned as well”
Lot of confidence that there aren’t any kinks in the system.
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I love how when people point to the decrease in SOD population everyone says “it’s too soon to say that!!” But two weeks in someone states their opinion not based on actual data other than “I see less spam in chat!” And everyone is like look!!! They are permabanning gdkp!!!
If the problem is the chat spam in LFG then ban advertising it in LFG.
As to the laundering of gold if they know that the gold is bought gold to begin with then stop it by banning that player who bought it before it can be “laundered”? If their systems at detecting gold buyers/sellers has improved then deal with those people directly.
But we all know this has nothing to do with people that buy or sell gold. There are alternatives that can be done that doesn’t involve banning a whole playstyle. And it isn’t even like it takes any extra effort to implement those kinds of changes.
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Obviously if an activity can cause bans it will not be advertised.
This is the interesting part - now instead of cracking down on gold selling, buying, and botting, they are also cracking down on GDKPs.
I agree that GDKPs obfuscate movement of illicit gold - that is their ONE negative. However, I don’t see how banning them is doing much to crack down on bots other than reduction in demand.
If they could figure out how to go after the bots, GDKPs wouldn’t be an issue. They are only an issue because blizzard is unable to prevent bots from creating raw gold to sell.
I really wonder if the numbers look for:
- total gold purchased
- number of players who bought gold
- amount of bots
I think total gold purchase / number of bots may have gone down, but I would not be surprised if number of players who bought gold went up.
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Excellent post, yeah GDKPs won’t be coming back anytime soon based on this.
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Not until the wow token.
Then GDKP incentivizes players to buy more wow tokens.
More money blizzard, GDKP good, less money blizzard, GDKP bad.
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Didn’t they only ban GDKP on SOD? Why not ALL versions? I don’t care either way just wondering.
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The other classic dev said something like ‘There was big outrage about the ban at first, but it’s largely settled down.’
Which it has, outside of a handful of whales on the forums posting on a variety of alts.
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This is fantastic news. It sounds like the Devs are happy with their decision on GDKPs…I agree this should go across all versions of WoW.
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Well that’s a lie. People are posting all the time about how they are still against the ban. But if you ignore all the people that are pro-GDKP and everything they write I guess then it would seem like things have calmed down a little.
They are using SOD as a testing ground to see if it is something that is viable. They probably would never implement it in other versions though because of the WoW Token that exists in other formats. It would lose them money if people had less of a reason to obtain gold via the Token in those version.
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Actually I chalk up the decrease in SoD Population to increased leveling time. It takes a MUCH longer time to hit 40 than it did to hit 25. Like a lot of people in the guild I’m in aren’t even close to 40. Some of them are just hitting the low 30s.
I think people really liked the quick “Get into the action of max level content in Classic WoW” Vibe of Phase 1 so it was insanely popular in general. This has nothing to do with GDKPs and please don’t ever kid yourself or draw conclusions on that lol. But yea there was a certain appeal to “Ok I’m gonna start my alt, ok 3 days later I’m now 25 and running BFD and PvPing in WSG”…much much quicker pace than Phase 2.
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No wow token SOD, GDKP bad.
Wow token wotlk, retail, GDKP gooooodddddd.
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Oh so I’m assuming with this statement you want a WoW Token introduced for SoD?
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They could ban GDKPs in Hardcore and Era.
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you know Blizzard sells gold in literally every version of WoW but Era and SOD, right?
Let me know how those bots are doing. I’m sure no one is buying gold to spend on their 25g Gnomer patterns. Also sure people won’t buy gold to buy Dual Spec when it inevitably comes out for 100+ gold.
I bet half the people running mouths about GDKPs buy gold to buy 500g BOE items on the AH.
And now with GDKP gone it’s easier to track those buyers. gg.
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You can assume with a name like that that he got caught trying to launder money somehow and invented some silly story. No one is buying it, least of all Blizz.
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